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Topic: what we're up against (Read 100504 times) previous topic - next topic
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what we're up against

Reply #75 –
Guys, I believe we are drifting away. I´m sorry for I am guilty for that... but to end it: there seem to be two kinds of remastering:

1. Keep it as it is (stay true to the original) - with all flaws.
2. Adapt it to current taste or technical possibilities.

I always was a supporter of the second method. Of course, one has to be careful not to exaggerate (you just can´t lift a standard recording from 1965 to levels of 2005) but it is possible to come close. So if a remastering involves using an Equalizer and slight dynamic compressor, why not? And as said before: if an orchestra with the help of DSP can sound like an orchestra it is a good thing. Screw that "natural approach" - many old recordings were mastered for analogue distribution and it shows. Take the famous recording of the "Carmina Burana" on DG (cond. Eugen Jochum). It was remastered in 1995 - and the remastering almost sounds like the first re-issue on CD. The engineers from Deutsche Grammophon didn´t even touch the original sound - but they should have. There are virtually no frequencies under 100 Hz and beyond 10.000 Hz. Clearly shows that the originals were produced with Vinyl in mind.

But now we have CD (actually... for 30 years now) - more bandwith. Some engineers didn´t yet realize that. I don´t know if Barry or Steven are always true to the original sound - and IMO they shouldn´t be. But if they are... what´s the reason for remastering anyway then?
marlene-d.blogspot.com

what we're up against

Reply #76 –
Quote from: Cavaille on
Guys, I believe we are drifting away. I´m sorry for I am guilty for that... but to end it: there seem to be two kinds of remastering:

1. Keep it as it is (stay true to the original) - with all flaws.


Hoffman takes that approach....to the point of absurdity.

He did a Jethro Tull compilation CD that included all of 'side one' of 'Thick As A Brick' -- an ~18 min track.  Apparently on the original masters, that track is in two sections separated by a gap, which were spliced together seamlessly on all known releases dating back to the LP .  Not on Hoffman's version, though.  He left the gap in. 

Similarly, he won't digitally re-create effects that aren't on the master tapes, but ARE on the original LPs, such as fade-ins that were created during the LP cutting step (e.g. 'Our Song' from the Yes album 90125.)

Such things are child's play to re-create digitally, of course.  But Hoffman won't do it, claiming that *any* digital editing or processing after A/D transfer, degrades the sound. And the 'audiophiles' on his forum believe him. 

The essential fallacy often in play, whether it's Diament or Hoffman or Roger Nichols or Doug Sax or George Massenberg or whichever audio engineer making a claim, is:  if he makes good-sounding audio products, whatever technical claim he makes about audio must be correct.    When in fact, the claims still stand or fall only on their own factual merits.




what we're up against

Reply #77 –
Quote from: krabapple on
The essential fallacy often in play, whether it's Diament or Hoffman or Roger Nichols or Doug Sax or George Massenberg or whichever audio engineer making a claim, is:  if he makes good-sounding audio products, whatever technical claim he makes about audio must be correct.    When in fact, the claims still stand or fall only on their own factual merits.


The inverse of this is the engineer making factually correct technical claims but who consistently delivers 'poor-sounding' audio products (however that sound is judged) is the rightest person on the unemployment line.

It's pointless going up against 'real-world' arguments with logic, because such counter-arguments are doomed to failure. Politics, the perfume counter and the audio store alike are places where the person with the loudest voice and the statement with the greatest truthiness wins.


what we're up against

Reply #78 –
Quote from: Ethan Winer on
Quote from: Axon on
Some audiophiles praise these remasters as being unusually close to the original source materal ("master tape" etc).

But how could they possibly know unless they had access to the original masters?

Sssssssshhhhhhh. Don't disturb the audiophile in his natural habitat.

The more rational comparisons are made against LP versions, or even specific pressings of LPs. And FWIW, Hoffman has been known to study different pressings of LPs he remasters.

what we're up against

Reply #79 –
the madness continues...

this is Barry in regard to the silly 'Pure Music' buffering software that bypasses Quicktime for iTunes playback...



http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php...mp;postcount=19

Quote
I believe the designer is seeking maximum fidelity, with 64-bit double precision math and all.

In my experience, FLAC and other so-called "lossless" formats do not provide maximum fidelity. Recent blind tests with direct, synchronized comparisons of FLAC vs. AIF demonstrated this to me and to my listening partners. Everyone scored 100% and it took us seconds to identify the harder, brigther, so-called "lossless" version. In discussions with a number of colleagues, I've found their experience has paralleled mine.



Someone should alert the FLAC developers that their software has a major flaw. 

and then, when asked what could be causing this..


http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php...mp;postcount=41


Quote
A good question. I don't know the answer.

The developer of one of the best sounding editing/mastering applications in my experience, is in the process of adding "lossless" to the formats the app can work with. He tells me he has heard the same thing and attributes the changes to "any real-time process". Other engineers have suggested this is further complicated by the non-linear aspect of the so-called "lossless" files.

To be clear, as I've said before, I'm not talking "night and day" differences, so I'm not surprised that a number of folks don't hear any changes when comparing. However, on a high resolution playback system, the differences are certainly audible, at least to myself, my listening partners, all of the colleagues and a number of audio software (and audiophile hardware) developers I've spoken with.

The developer's mention of "any real-time process" falls completely in line with my experience. One example I often cite is a particular sample rate conversion algorithm, which I find to be more transparent than any other I've heard. When used in an off-line process (i.e. not while listening), it can create results that sound more like the unconverted original than any other SRC algorithm in my experience (and I've tested quite a few). However, when used in real-time, artifacts are evident. Again, not "night and day" but enough so that in comparison with the unconverted original, the changes are evident.

Best regards,
Barry

what we're up against

Reply #80 –
Quote
Recent blind tests with direct, synchronized comparisons of FLAC vs. AIF demonstrated this to me and to my listening partners. Everyone scored 100% and it took us seconds to identify the harder, brigther, so-called "lossless" version. In discussions with a number of colleagues, I've found their experience has paralleled mine.

well, he is claiming 100% accuracy in blind-tests for him and others, so that's something. do we conclude this is bunk? or a decoder issue with FLAC?
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

what we're up against

Reply #81 –
Just send him an original WAV and a decoded FLAC and bid $1,000,000 if he can tell which is which in repeatable fashion.

what we're up against

Reply #82 –
Hey, i can clearly tell Monkey's Audio from FLAC. In the first case there's much more humming from my CPU cooler
CUETools 2.1.6

what we're up against

Reply #83 –
Quote from: googlebot on
Just send him an original WAV and a decoded FLAC and bid $1,000,000 if he can tell which is which in repeatable fashion.

Except he isn't that dumb and he didn't make that claim.
He is being very careful to claim that because FLAC is "non-linear" - ie it is using computing resources in a variable manner.
There are many things wrong with his argument, but not as many as are wrong with your counter.

This type of argument is not uncommon.  One makes a claim which at first blush appears broad, but is actually quite narrow.
You rally the dumb troops with your broadside, and leave plenty of cover against your detractors.

Rising to the bait and attacking that which was not said serves only to strengthen the position of the claimant.

I don't mean to single you out for criticism, googlebot, but I've been making this plea a lot lately.  If one is going to enter the fray, one should be sure they are actually helping the right side.
Giving the enemy a cheap victory by breaking the rules of formal debate (and you would be called out) harms the objectivist camp.
Creature of habit.

what we're up against

Reply #84 –
The elephant in the room, of course, is that under this sort of logic, all computer playback of audio is "non-linear", whether offline or not, and for any audio format. All audio format I/O is buffered. All audio interface I/O is buffered, even low-latency ASIO. For real-time FLAC decoding to be some sort of bugaboo, and WAV, or AIFF, or MKA, or whatever *not* to be, is to suppose that trivial differences in buffer sizes and CPU instructions causes significant differences in sound quality. So, that sort of thinking would predict that, for instance, real-time WAV playback would sound different when read from disk with a 1k buffer compared to a 128 byte buffer...

All memory playback is doing is pre-decoding the entire audio file to RAM - at which point it is passed to the sound card in an obviously "non-linear" fashion (device interrupt triggers copy of audio to mmap'd device memory). It's nothing at all like how a DAC works with SPDIF, where the hardware really does pick apart each sample one at a time and outputs it. (And even that usually involves a pipelined oversampler with a delay, yadda yadda yadda.)


You know, looking at the big picture in all of this, audiophile interest in computer audio can be almost completely predicted by the level of knowledge audiophiles have about computer engineering. As their knowledge increases, their demands for computer playback become ever more fanciful. First people don't know anything about computer audio, except perhaps (back then) that it was not tuned for audiophile sound quality, therefore computers = bad. Then once people heard about EMI they demanded external interfaces, without comparing their noise levels with internal interfaces. When people learn about signal-induced jitter they start to demand ASRC, or SSRC, or non-isochronous interfaces, or whatever floats their boat, usually (though not always) without any comparison of actual jitter figures, to say nothing of jitter audibility results. Now what we're seeing here is how people are gaining a faint inkling of how audio decoding actually works, and demanding that the process be made as complicated as possible, in order to optimize for a specific, superficial quantity (the amount of I/O and CPU time necessary to perform during real-time audio playback). Like with all of the other issues/demands listed above, this involves a very real potential source of distortion, but without any sense of scale or magnitude as to the actual importance of the distortion. What is important is merely that the distortion exists (even if it only matters at scales of the Planck length) and it must be minimized or eliminated.

So I'll make a prediction based on this hypothesis: one of these days, somebody's going to "discover" that buffered I/O to audio interfaces is bad, and will actually go to the trouble of building a system capable of performing real-time, single-point audio I/O at 96khz. (That's roughly equivalent to an ASIO configuration with a buffer size of 0.01ms.) COTS real-time gear can actually hit 1us loop rates with Intel hardware - under duress - so this is not as crazy as it sounds. But it will be just as expensive.

what we're up against

Reply #85 –
Quote from: Axon on
The elephant in the room, of course, is that under this sort of logic, all computer playback of audio is "non-linear", whether offline or not, and for any audio format. All audio format I/O is buffered. All audio interface I/O is buffered, even low-latency ASIO. For real-time FLAC decoding to be some sort of bugaboo, and WAV, or AIFF, or MKA, or whatever *not* to be, is to suppose that trivial differences in buffer sizes and CPU instructions causes significant differences in sound quality. So, that sort of thinking would predict that, for instance, real-time WAV playback would sound different when read from disk with a 1k buffer compared to a 128 byte buffer...

I agree with this 100%, and feel this is the belief which is asking to be challenged. 

A problem with these sorts of arguments, though, is that by attacking the sloganistic "non-linear" one (rightfully) complicates the matter and in exploding the boulder of false mantra creates many smaller rocks from which a skillful (if dishonest) opponent can pick and choose his cover.
Creature of habit.

what we're up against

Reply #86 –
The funny thing is, for very low CPU usages, as you get while playing back WAV files, modern processors cycle dozens to hundreds of sleep states per second with enormous stress for the voltage regulator. For example, Intel processors with modern incarnations of SpeedStep as the Core 2 Duo switch within 5 microseconds between various sleep states. That means currents of 30 ampere and more continuously switch on and off. That's about the worst electromagnetic "non-linearity" you can get. The amount of switching decreases with the amount of required processing. So Monkey's Audio at the highest compression setting would actually cause less power fluctuation (and RF noise) than an idling operating system playing back a PCM file.

PS But I see it coming... Confront them with reality and the next big thing won't be more truth but alchemists selling Intel BX mainboards with "audiophile grade" Pentium II processors for 5 digit dollars.

what we're up against

Reply #87 –
Quote from: Axon on
So, that sort of thinking would predict that, for instance, real-time WAV playback would sound different when read from disk with a 1k buffer compared to a 128 byte buffer...


Well, if they knew enough, they would surely experiment and find differences (which would be superior, I don't know).  Whatever somebody said first would probably stick.  Remember, Barry Diament and many other forum audiophiles claim differences between SSD, USB, and hard drives as a storage medium (in fact this was one of the dems at the Computer Audiophile convention).

I'd like to hone in a bit more on Hoffman and Diament's mastering practices.

Hoffman:  he's all over the map in his approach to tapes.  Sometimes its flat from the tape into the board (though he chooses among different tape decks to alter the sound).  Other times he has bragged about daisy chaining two analog eq units to get enough boost or cut at certain frequencies.  He doesn't like reverb, so even if the artists clearly intended to have reverb added in mastering (1950s rnr stuff) he masters dry.  Reading through his notes and listening to the widely varying sounds on the things he's mastered it appears it's basically all about whatever HE wants on a particular album.  That generally means (and he has written about it) three things: no compression, leaving what he calls the bass "cloud", and making sure the singing voices--i.e. the mids--are prominent. Nothing else is consistent.

Diament:  most of his credits derive from the fact that he was the cd mastering department at WEA at the beginning.  Pretty much the only major credit he has since he left there in the 1980s is the Bob Marley catalog--and those were redone less than ten years later.  He did not compress whatever tapes he got, though often he was given tapes equalized/limited for LP.  In those cases his cds sound really really similar to the LP versions.  His audiophile purism seems to have translated into many credible masterings though sometimes with errors like channel reversals.  His sparring with Ethan over "microdynamics" was actually his most embarrassing moment, for my money.  I mean, granted he doesn't know much about computers, but his bs about dynamics was novice Absolute Sound reader letter level.  Oh, he also claims that he can tell the difference between cds produced by different plants (sometimes he's so sure he doesn't even have to compare to the master).  He prefers SRC-produced cds from the WEA facility in PA, by the way.  Once a Hoffman member sent him a cd to ask if it was his version and he initially said no, then changed his tune, claiming his listening was off because his dog had been sick.  Whenever he claims to have done blind tests with others, the results are always 100%.  Needless to say, this is suspicious.

And one more thing.  I'm not sure he has ever used flac.  He was asked directly what software he used to play flac on that thread and ignored it.  He claims to use a Mac Powerbook G4 and itunes/Amarra.  He has never used the word fluke, xiph, cog, songbird, or xbmc on the Hoffman forum and in May 2008 he said he'd never used VLC.  He uses Soundblade for his mastering, but from a gander at their product sheet they don't mention flac support.  He could easily have used ALAC, but that is not flac (not that I think it performs any differently).

All this boils down to is what we all know about audiophiles--a)they are suggestible; b)they report false positives when doing comparisons, and c)the more sure of their ears they are (like mastering engineers) the more prone they are to false positives and irrational explanations of the impossible things they hear.  "What--you didn't hear that?  But it was so obvious.  You call yourself an audiophile?  You must not be discerning.  Or maybe you just have a crappy system."  It's powerful stuff.

what we're up against

Reply #88 –
Quote from: timcupery on
Quote
Recent blind tests with direct, synchronized comparisons of FLAC vs. AIF demonstrated this to me and to my listening partners. Everyone scored 100% and it took us seconds to identify the harder, brigther, so-called "lossless" version. In discussions with a number of colleagues, I've found their experience has paralleled mine.

well, he is claiming 100% accuracy in blind-tests for him and others, so that's something. do we conclude this is bunk? or a decoder issue with FLAC?


If there was a decoder issue it would be easy to know comparing the output with the original wave, using checksum.

what we're up against

Reply #89 –
The ironic thing here is that all these computer-audio detractors seem to overlook the fact that a CD player *is* a computer. And that the data on a CD is encoded (eight-to-fourteen modulation). Regardless of whether you're playing a CD on a CD player or a FLAC file on a general-purpose computer, both systems have to buffer and decode the data before it can eventually be streamed to the DAC.

what we're up against

Reply #90 –
I think the whole situation is quite sad. As usual.

There are real software and hardware issues on many modern PCs that can sometimes audibly change the sound quality - and they can be somewhat tricky to track down. However, for there to be an audible difference between FLAC and WAV there'd have to be something so broken that the PC would actually be useless for audio use.

Either a given PC is this bad, or it isn't. If it isn't, then reported audible differences between FLAC and WAV are imagined. Even so, this doesn't mean that there are no problems with a given PC - and it raises the likelihood that many "audiophile" are taking pains to fix some imaginary problem, while missing some very real problems.

Which IMO is quite typical of audiophiles. Since most of it is psychological / imagined / placebo, audiophile-grade power cables are really important, while the background noise and clicks of vinyl are no problem at all.


At least in PC audio, we have some sanity. It's bred here on HA, and it has an obvious correlation with some HTPC enthusiasts, where most people work very hard to fix real problems of PC video playback, rather than imagined ones. The obvious difference being that fault-free audio playback is far either to achieve than fault-free video playback.

Cheers,
David.

what we're up against

Reply #91 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
many "audiophile" are taking pains to fix some imaginary problem, while missing some very real problems.

Which IMO is quite typical of audiophiles. Since most of it is psychological / imagined / placebo, audiophile-grade power cables are really important, while the background noise and clicks of vinyl are no problem at all.

Room acoustic treatment is my favorite - "audiophiles" will spend thousands on cables/Shakti stones/special equipment racks, and perform all sorts of bizarre, downright ritualistic tweaks, but not spend a dime to address +/- 10dB response anomalies in the low frequencies due to standing waves, first reflections, flutter echoes, etc.:

"Hmm, the bass seems rather slow [big bump at around 100 Hz] - maybe if I loosen *these* three screws on the cover of my amp...perfect!"

(I shit thee not, good ol' Jonathan Scull did just that (the claimed anomaly wasn't a 100 Hz resonance, but still...) in his review of a Forsell amplifier...and I believe *Dr.* Forsell himself was present...  To give Scull a bit of credit, he did do quite a bit of treatment to his listening space, but lordy, he made some outrageous claims...hugely entertaining to read, though/as a result)
"Not sure what the question is, but the answer is probably no."

what we're up against

Reply #92 –
To be fair, there ARE some posters who are (albeit gently) challenging Barry on some of his assertions and assumptions over on that board, though they are soft-gloving it more than they probably should.

I think that a lot of times, on that board especially, a term will be brought up with the proper definition and understanding only to be crammed into a place of "audiophile" nonsense by somebody else later on.  I believe when "microdynamics" was first raised it was to describe the aesthetic subtleties of older or unprocessed recordings that are often lost to modern compression, EQ, etc.    It wasn't until a few weeks later that SOME people suddenly decided that microdynamics required a 24-bit word, or that by some logic they would be governed by a choice of cable, DAC, or clocking scheme, indepdendent of any choices made in the mastering studio.  THEN it suddenly became nonsense.  Same thing with "soundstage," which at this point I just recognize as an auditory clue that someone is speaking on behalf of expectation bias.

It is notable that there are a lot of perfectly reasonable people over on that board, just that the ones who are a bit out there happen to post about 500 times a day, making their numbers seem bigger.  That combined with the paternal regard guys like Barry seem to have to the greater group really gets in the way of what could be some great debates over there.

For the record, I like Steve's mastering work a great deal.  Barry's as well.  Steve's DCC and Audio Fidelity work is to me analogous to the chef who doesn't put salt, pepper, ketchup, or sugar in the meal knowing full well that you have ample supplies of all on your table already.    I have an old Paul McCartney disc from DCC that I need to crank the treble on a tad when I play it, but appreciate the fact that Steve didn't try to mix it in himself.    Barry's original Led Zeppelin work is in my opinion the best way to hear the albums, showing me that you don't really need to know anything about sound science to have a good ear for aesthetics in music.

what we're up against

Reply #93 –
Quote from: danroche on
To be fair, there ARE some posters who are (albeit gently) challenging Barry on some of his assertions and assumptions over on that board, though they are soft-gloving it more than they probably should.


It is certainly true that there are as many sane people as wackos.  However, the wackos are in control because a)mention of dbt is forbidden, b)the board is heavily policed and protects favorite sons like Barry Diament and Tonepub (who publishes an audiophile e-zine) so that when someone does challenge him either the post or the thread disappear (see Ethan's experience above), and c)the board is very heavily populated with people who believe in authority and have chose Steve and Barry as authorities (and indeed, in the context of that board, despite their multiple irrationalities and inconsistencies, they are worthy of authority over there).

For these reasons a number of experienced mastering engineers have left or been booted from the ranks there.

It's safe to say they don't seek enlightenment over there.  As a prior post eloquently analyzed, it's more like "hey man, don't kill my buzz."

what we're up against

Reply #94 –
Pageranks (basically number of referring sites + some sugar):

stevehoffman.tv: 5/10
stereophile.com: 6/10
hydrogenaudio.org: 6/10

For a pure forum without advertising or high ranked sponsors that's quite a score. It's pretty rare that forum posts are referred to in comparison to editorial articles. So Hydrogenaudio's stand isn't too bad. The other side is far from winning...

what we're up against

Reply #95 –
Quote from: timcupery on
Quote
Recent blind tests with direct, synchronized comparisons of FLAC vs. AIF demonstrated this to me and to my listening partners. Everyone scored 100% and it took us seconds to identify the harder, brigther, so-called "lossless" version. In discussions with a number of colleagues, I've found their experience has paralleled mine.

well, he is claiming 100% accuracy in blind-tests for him and others, so that's something. do we conclude this is bunk? or a decoder issue with FLAC?


I conclude there's not enough detail to tell whether it even approached what we here would call a proper blind test.

what we're up against

Reply #96 –
Quote from: krabapple on
this is Barry in regard to the silly 'Pure Music' buffering software that bypasses Quicktime for iTunes playback

Barry just makes stuff up as he goes along:

http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php...mp;postcount=28

Quote
Low order bits represent the low level information in a file.
This is where subtle harmonic nuance, reverb tails and a lot of spatial information is carried.


Oh really?

--Ethan
I believe in Truth, Justice, and the Scientific Method

what we're up against

Reply #97 –
Quote from: Ethan Winer on
Quote from: krabapple on
this is Barry in regard to the silly 'Pure Music' buffering software that bypasses Quicktime for iTunes playback

Barry just makes stuff up as he goes along:

http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php...mp;postcount=28

Quote
Low order bits represent the low level information in a file.
This is where subtle harmonic nuance, reverb tails and a lot of spatial information is carried.


Oh really?

--Ethan


Oh gosh - the fact that that stuff is passing without argument on a forum like SH.tv says that either a) people are actually buying it or b) people are treating Barry with "rambling grandpa" respect and just letting him go.  Both possibilities are really sad.

This is extra disappointing because I actually REALLY LIKE Barry's mastering work.  I still think that he did the DEFINITIVE mastering job for much of the Led Zeppelin catalog, and I credit him for making CDs like "Listen Like Thieves" sound fresh and dynamic more than 20 years after they were pressed.

I think people understand that being a GENIUS guitarist or even pianist doesn't automatically make you credible in music theory.  Just ask Hendrix, McCartney, or anyone else who never bothered to read music.  What I don't understand is that people DO believe that great mastering or mixing engineers are automatically credible electrical engineers and computer scientists.  Some are, but they certainly don't NEED to be to succeed.

Barry's skills and talents are established and can stand on their own.  Why he has to take stands like this on areas he's clearly not educated on is a frustrating mystery.

what we're up against

Reply #98 –
Quote from: danroche on
I still think that he did the DEFINITIVE mastering job for much of the Led Zeppelin catalog
Quote from: Ethan Winer on
* BTW, do we even know if Barry is a good mastering engineer? To know that for sure we'd need to hear the original masters he received, then compare them to the released versions. Has anyone here done that? How do we know the recordings weren't already fabulous? How do we know Barry didn't make them sound worse?

what we're up against

Reply #99 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: danroche on
I still think that he did the DEFINITIVE mastering job for much of the Led Zeppelin catalog
Quote from: Ethan Winer on
* BTW, do we even know if Barry is a good mastering engineer? To know that for sure we'd need to hear the original masters he received, then compare them to the released versions. Has anyone here done that? How do we know the recordings weren't already fabulous? How do we know Barry didn't make them sound worse?



In all fairness, if you apply that logic then you'd never be able to make judgements about any mastering engineer, ever.

That and the fact that, as a music dork, I happen to own every single mastering of Led Zeppelin IV ever made - the original LP, the MFSL LP, old cassettes, and the 3+ masterings of the album on CD to date (in order - Barry, Jimmy Page, and whoever did the tracks on "Mothership" that I'm sure will seed the next CD release.)  I can say with 100% confidence in my personal opinion that Barry's CD sounds better than the others, even though it's the oldest CD pressing.  Not too loud, not too soft, not too bright, etc.  Sounds enjoyable at any volume.  The early 90s reissues sound brittle and compressed.  The "mothership" tracks hurt my ears after 20 minutes of listening.

Again, I have never heard, and will never hear, the original masters - but I think it's reasonable to assume that if you're Atlantic records, and you're preparing how a generation of listeners will enjoy "Stairway to Heaven," you take steps to ensure that a series of mastering engineers, to include the original songwriter, do not completely butcher the sound of the master tapes.  And in the event that Barry's mastering happens to be the LEAST like the master tapes among the available releases, then well good on him.  He improved the masters and gave me music I can enjoy.  And if the master tapes already sounded fabulous, Barry did the right thing by backing away from the mixing console and letting them be.  Like a good mastering engineer should.

Again, not to defend the guy's bizarre take on Computer Science and the nuances of the least significant bit as applied to reverb tails, but you need to give respect where respect is due, otherwise you're just flinging mud.  That or just avoid broad semantic arguments that try to strip away respect he may have earned in other areas.